Lifeboat (1944)

World War II. Battle for the Atlantic. A ship is torpedoed. Eight people scramble aboard a damaged lifeboat. They're a cross-section of American society, from a common sailor to a tycoon. Seven white, one black. One of the women - a bit unhinged from the London Blitz - jumps overboard after her baby dies and drowns herself. That leaves seven souls. This in itself would be a pretty gripping story. Seven people in one small boat pitted against the entire North Atlantic. Will they survive? Will they reach the safety of America? Or will they succumb to their baser natures, tear each other to bits, resort to cannibalism when they get too hungry? Most other directors would have taken that route. But not Alfred Hitchcock. A bunch of people in a lifeboat adrift on an angry sea wasn't enough for him. He throws in a little something extra, just to spice up the mixture a bit. He adds the enemy to the pot.

Lifeboat begins in media res. We don't meet the people in a cute little montage as they are boarding the ship that will carry them into the war. The ship's funnel is slipping under the water as the credits end. The camera pans across the sea, and we see the ejected detritus of human lives - books, crates, food, clothing, playing cards. Then we see the lifeboat, damaged but still afloat. In it sits Connie Parker (Tallulah Bankhead), completely incongruous in her mink and her perfectly coiffed hair, filming the spectacle with her hand-held camera. Soon she is joined by John Kovac (John Hodiak), a rough-and-tumble seaman. Others come soon. Stanley (Hume Cronyn), the radio operator; Gus (William Bendix), a stoker; Alice (Mary Anderson), a nurse; Charles S. Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), the tycoon; Joe (Canada Lee), a steward; and Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel), the young mother who takes her own life after having survived the shipwreck. These people don't exactly like each other. They come from various socio-economic backgrounds, and they have been thrown together by the war. If they are to survive, they must learn to work together. And they might just do that. But then Willy (Walter Slezak) arrives. Willy came from the German u-boat that sunk their ship. Now he claims a place on their lifeboat. He says he's just a common seaman, but can they trust him? After all, he is a German and this is war. Willy soon proves his usefulness when he successfully amputates Gus' gangrenous leg, saving his life. After this, the others pretty much accept him as one of their own. After Willy saves every one's lives during a storm, they pretty much let him run the show. Eventually, though, Willy's true colors show through. He pushes the ailing Gus overboard and calmly watches as he drowns. When the others realize what he's done, they turn on Willy en masse and kill him. Not long after, they encounter a German supply ship. Just as they resign themselves to being captured, an American ship arrives and sinks the German ship. While waiting for the Americans to arrive and rescue them, another German climbs aboard their lifeboat and pulls a gun on them. He's quickly disarmed. He asks if they're going to kill him. "What are you gonna do with people like that?" Stanley asks. No one has an answer for him.

The lack of answers is one of the reasons that Lifeboat is the least known of all of Hitchcock's films, and it's one of the things that - to me - make it one of his best. There are no real answers to questions about hatred, intolerance, thuggery, genocide and the rest of the host of problems that beset the modern world. What are you gonna do with people who kill indiscriminately and - seemingly - for the fun of it? What are you gonna do with people who would rather hate than love, would rather look for the negative than the positive? What are you gonna do with war criminals? Can they be rehabilitated? Or will they always carry their hatred with them? Hitchcock doesn't provide us with any answers to these questions. He just shoves seven people into a leaky boat lets them go at each other. And the forces of democracy don't make a very good showing for themselves. First, they're too busy fighting amongst themselves. Then they abdicate all authority to their enemy, because he's strong and willing to take charge. Finally, when the leader's mask slips off and they see him for who he really is, they turn on him and slaughter him with a vengeance. This is a fairly accurate analogy for America's involvement in World War II. You could also say that it's a pretty good analogy for every dictatorship that has ever existed, from Julius Caesar right on down to Muammar Gaddafi. Dictators take advantage of fractions and infighting to assume control. Everyone sees them as strong, take-charge leaders and cedes authority to the dictator. Eventually, the dictator's actions grow so audacious that those who allowed him into power turn on him and destroy him. So, in Lifeboat, Hitchcock gives us a primer - and a warning - about dictatorship. And he wraps the entire thing up in an extremely engrossing film that takes place entirely within the confines of a single lifeboat.

Lifeboat is rated G and is filmed in glorious black and white. Running time is 97 minutes.

The TIme of Your Life (1948)

Adapted from the stage play by William Soroyan, H. C. Potter's The Time of Your Life is the story of a good man who likes to observe humanity through the bottom of a champagne bottle. Joe (James Cagney) spends all of his time hanging out at the Nick's Pacific Street Saloon with his friend Tom (Wayne Morris). Joe drinks champagne, watches all of the people who come and go, and sends Tom on errands, sometimes to place bets on the horse races, sometimes to buy a bunch of strange items. Nick (William Bendix), the tough but kind owner of the saloon, doesn't understand why a man of Joe's station would waste his time in a joint like his when he could be uptown in some swanky place. Through the course of the film, a variety of characters enter Nick's, some to looking for a job, other's just looking for a drink and a friendly ear. These include Wesley (Reginald Beane), who Nick hires to play the piano; Harry (Paul Draper), the tap-dancing comedian; Kit Carson (James Barton), a cowboy who can tell tall tales; Kitty Duvall (Jeanne Cagney), a former singer; an Arab philosopher (Pedro de Cordoba); Willie (Richard Erdman), a pinball maniac; and Mary (Gale Page), a woman of quality. When Kitty comes into the saloon, Tom falls head over heels for her, so Joe sets about getting the two together. But there's a tough stool pigeon named Blick (Tom Powers) who's trying to frame Kitty for prostitution. Joe gets Tom a job as a truck driver, finds Kitty and Joe a place to live, and beats up Blick with the help of Kit and the others. In the end, the bad guys are dispatched, the lovebirds are a happy couple, and Joe goes right back to drinking champagne and watching humanity pass before him.

I like this movie a lot. The Time of Your Life is an incredibly underrated film, filled with wonderful characters and a plot that moves along at its own pace until it reaches its satisfying conclusion. My two favorite characters are Kit Carson and Mary. When Kit arrives, he starts spinning yarns about his days as a cowboy, as he downs pint after pint of beer. The story gets wilder and wilder, until Kit stops and asks Joe whether or not he believes him. Joe responds with one of my all-time favorite lines: "Living is an art, it's not bookkeeping. It takes an awful lot of rehearsal for a man to get to be himself." Truer words were never spoken. When Mary comes in, it's obvious that she has wealth and station. Although they appear to be strangers, Mary and Joe begin a dialogue about a time when they were once lovers. He couldn't tell her how he felt; she married another man to please her family. Joe reminisces about the children they never had. It's a poignant scene filled with regret and sadness, and when Mary leaves she does so slowly, as if she'd much prefer to stay with Joe than return to her wealthy husband. The movie never explains why Joe spends his days at Nicks, or where he gets the money that he seems to spend at will, and that's a good thing. This is an instance when too much information would have spoiled the film. Joe remains something of a mystery, so we can form our own opinions about him, about why he's here, about whether or not he and Mary really were together all those years ago in Mexico City.

The Time of Your Life is rated G, and is available only in unrestored black and white.